The Legend is now listed on HTC’s Indian website for well over a week now, but no official word yet. We’re used to a bit of hoohaa around a product of this pedigree, after all, we’re talking about an upgrade to the HTC Hero, which was one of the best android smartphone available last year. A scan through google shows prices as low as Rs 24,990, we’re not sure if these are grey market prices or official prices. Thinkdigit has put a price of Rs 36,990 on it.

Update: The official launch price is Rs 25,990. That’s a good price for a very exciting Android phone, surely beats other offerings we’ve had in India so far.



Specs and size-wise, the Legend and the Hero are quite similar , the Legend adds the Android 2.1 Eclair update, an AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, and an optical trackpad. The 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A on the Hero has been replaced by a 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor. The Legend has 384 MB RAM, in comparison to the Hero’s 288 MB RAM.

After the disappointing Symbian S60-based Nokia N97 and the Maemo-based N900, it’s a bit difficult to take any new Nokia flagship seriously. So when the company launches the Nokia-8, based on the new open-source Symbian^3 operating system, the great hardware on board convince us as an iPhone-killer.

The N8 is expected to retail at 370 euros in Europe, which comes to approximately Rs. 22,000. We would expect the cost to be a lot more by the time it gets slapped with custom duty and taxes in India.

So what does the phone come with? For starters, there’s a 3.5-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen (16 million colours, 360×640 pixels), 680MHz processor and 3D graphics accelerator, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, VGA videocall camera, 16GB of onboard storage, microSD card slot (up to 32GB), a battery with 12 and half hours of talk-time, and pretty much everything else you can think of.

Microsoft launches new Kin One and Kin Two ‘social phones’

It had long been rumoured that Microsoft was looking to get into the mobile phone market, with the supposed ‘Project Pink’ being the inaugural two handsets it launches. Well, all those reports have turned out to be true as the company yesterday unveiled the kin series of ‘social phones’.

Both the phones are manufactured by Sharp and are intended at a younger audience, or those for whom social networking with the phone is more important than business-related productivity.


The Kin One is the entry-level handset that rocks a touchscreen (presumably capacitive, since MS says it’s easy to navigate with your thumb) that slides up to reveal a compact QWERTY keyboard, which Microsoft says can be used with even one hand. It comes with a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and standard video recording, 4GB of memory and a mono speaker.


The Kin Two sports a wider touchscreen with also a wider QWERTY keyboard for comfortable two-handed texting. The specs receive a bump here, as the camera gets upgraded to an 8-megapixel affair that can shoot HD video; the memory doubles to 8GB; and stereo speakers promise to let you do away with the headphones.

Nokia X2 music phone and Ovi Music Unlimited

Nokia is on a roll. After releasing a bunch of new phones and the flagship N8, the company is now stepping it up in the ‘mobile music’ segment as it unveiled the X2 music phone and the Ovi Music Unlimited service in India.

The XpressMusic series of phones has been making waves for some time now, and Nokia seems to be slowly rebranding it to the ‘X’ series. The new X2 is a candybar handset in the same line as the popular Nokia 5310 and the Nokia 5130, sporting a 2.2-inch screen, 48MB of internal memory and a microSD slot (up to 16GB), dedicated music keys, 3.5mm headphone jack, stereo FM radio and all the other features you would look for in a music-oriented phone.


The company hasn’t skimped on the camera either, throwing in a 5-megapixel sensor with autofocus and LED flash. Nice! There’s no 3G or Wi-Fi here to jack up the price, and you’ll have easy connectivity with your PC via Bluetooth (with A2DP) or the microUSB port.

Along with all this, the battery life of the phone is tremendously impressive as it claims over 13 hours of talk-time, 27 hours of music playback and 26 days of standby time. Wow!

Samsung non-Corby affordable touchscreen phone, the S5620 Monte

While Samsung’s Corby line of phones has been the forerunner in its sub-10,000 price range of touchscreen mobile phones, the company does have a few other gizmos up its sleeve. The new S5620 Monte promises great value for money with its 3-inch screen, great music capabilities and GPS.
Featuring a capacitive touchscreen running on the TouchWiz 2.0 UI, we were a bit surprised to see that the handset comes with GPS. It’s not often that you see a phone priced at Rs. 8,850 packing such impressive specs.

Here’s the full feature run-down of the Samsung S5620 Monte:

Charismatic line, Comfortable grip: If you have an expressive style, you will appreciate the charismatic design statement Monte makes. The sleek form with visually striking colour stripe is impressive to look at, making it the stylish choice for modern users that is full of personality.

Samsung Galaxy S I9000 & HTC EVO 4G

2. Samsung Galaxy S I9000: An hour before HTC launched the EVO 4G, we featured the Samsung Galaxy S I9000 as the ‘HTC HD2 with Android that everyone has been waiting for’. Indeed, the handset is an amazing piece of machinery and Samsung’s customized version of Android 2.1 promises to further the functionality of this baby manifold. The addition of Swype for all messaging will make typing on the 4-inch Super AMOLED screen (480×800 pixels) a much more pleasurable experience than any other touchscreen phone. Check out our report on the Samsung Galaxy S here.

1. HTC EVO 4G: The most feature-rich and hardware-heavy Android phone in the near future is the HTC EVO 4G, brought out in collaboration with US mobile carrier Sprint. Packing a large 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen (480×800 pixels) and powered by the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, Gizmodo reckons that this is “the best Android phone out there. It may even be the best phone, period. Its combination of speed, size, and power mean that everyone else is officially playing catch-up.” The icing on top? It can use 4G WiMAX networks for higher Internet speeds, comes with an 8-megapixel camera and offers a mini-HDMI port! The HTC EVO 4G promises to convert those who don’t believe in love at first sight. Read our coverage of the EVO 4G

GPS-oriented Nuvifone phones

The Garmin-Asus series of GPS-oriented Nuvifone phones has been received with mixed reactions so far. While the GPS part of the device is unquestionably awesome, the ‘phone’ part hasn’t quite lived up to the mark. And at the high prices they sell for, it wasn’t a lucrative proposition for most Indian users.

Now, the company has introduced a new phone that’s a bit more affordable while providing all the same GPS features as its bigger brothers. The new Nuvifone M10 has a 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen (65K colours, 480×800 pixels resolution) and runs on the new Windows Mobile 6.5.3 operating system – the only phone in India to come preloaded with this latest version, according to Garmin-Asus.

Other features of the phone include a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus (but no flash), 4GB of internal flash memory (expandable via microSD), Pocket Office, push email, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP and, of course, GPS with A-GPS.

Recognizing that location is relevant to every aspect of every day, the Garmin-Asus M10 is designed with location information at its core and it delivers the most advanced location experience on a Windows phone. Navigation functions – available in both Hindi and English – are linked to frequently used applications such as calendar, contacts, email, internet browser, and messaging; making anexceptionally intuitive and smooth navigation experience. All of the maps come pre-loaded on the phone’s internal memory.

The M10 also has highway mode that tells drivers the next three upcoming street exits so they can plan ahead. The device is ready for automotive navigation out-of-the-box, and it includes everything a customer needs to use the device in a car, including a powered cradle and windshield mount

The Garmin-Asus Nuvifone M10 is available in India at Rs. 19,990.